Bodycam: Dog Guides Ill. Police Officer to Leash During Fire Rescue

Aurora police saved 4-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier from a burning house, but not before the canine led an officer to a leash before being rescued.

Sept. 22, 2025

4 min read

What to know

Aurora police rescued a 4-year-old dog from a burning home Sept. 11 after the canine guided an officer to a leash.
Body camera footage shows the dog leading an officer to its leash before both exited the home safely.
“I think every cop that I know would’ve done the same thing,” said Aurora Police Officer Michael Ely about rescuing the dog.

By Molly Morrow

Source Beacon-News (Aurora, Ill.)

A house fire response by the Aurora police and fire departments recently ended in the rescue of a 4-year-old dog, who appears to have guided a police investigator to a leash during the incident, body camera footage shows.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, Michael Ely, a longtime officer with the Aurora Police Department who currently works as an Investigator in the department’s Crisis Intervention Unit, got a call about a house fire near where he and his partner, Investigator Jacob Leonard, were out in the community.

Volunteering to go, he and Leonard arrived on the scene of the fire before the fire department — which is common, he explained on Thursday, since police officers are generally out patrolling the community already.

The fire occurred at around 12:50 p.m. on the 2400 block of Whitehall Court on Aurora’s East Side, per a news release from the Aurora Fire Department. Neighbors reported heavy smoke and flames coming from the rear of a single-family home.

Ely said that when they arrived, neighbors were telling the responding officers that they didn’t know if the family was home and that there was a dog named Oakley inside.

So Ely kicked the front door in, he said, and he and Leonard split up to search the house, finding no people inside.

Ely took the main floor, and ultimately found the dog in a gated room and removed the fence blocking the door so the dog could get out.

“The fire was actually on the corner of the house where that dog was,” Ely said. “So the room he was in was extremely smoky. And, when I popped the gate open, I think he just wanted out of that room.”

Body camera footage released by the Aurora Police Department shows the dog lead Ely to a different part of the house, where the dog’s leash is hanging. Ely is then seen clipping the leash on.

“Come on, Oakley,” Ely is heard saying in the video as both exit the house.

“He knows where he can get out of the house, probably,” Ely said after the fact about the dog leading him through the house before they exited. “Or he was going for his leash, because that’s what it sure looked like to me.”

Oakley is a 4-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier rescue, per the news release from the police department.

Ely explained that he passed the dog, Oakley, to one of the social workers outside who was with him, and they got him to a neighbor until the dog’s owners arrived at the scene.

The homeowners, who wished to remain anonymous, said in the news release that they are “forever grateful” to the department for saving their dog.

The fire was ultimately brought under control within 24 minutes of the initial call, with 25 fire personnel responding, according to the fire department.

There were no injuries reported, per the fire department, and the house remained habitable, but residents were advised to seek temporary housing elsewhere until cleanup could be completed.

Ely said he’s responded to calls with dogs before, but “never one in that kind of distress in a fire.”

“I think every cop that I know would’ve done the same thing,” Ely said about the rescue.

The video of the incident has since taken off on social media, getting featured on the Instagram account @wereatedogs, where it received a “14/10 for all” rating. It’s garnered over 400,000 likes and prompted comments reading things like “Even in a crisis he is the most polite, goodest boy” and “wait a minute i can’t go nowhere wifout my leash.”

Some of the responses on social media, Ely noted, asked what pet owners should do to let firefighters or police officers know there are animals in their home.

Ely explained there are stickers that can be bought online and put on a house’s front door to alert responding officers.

But, like many pet owners, Ely himself didn’t have one of these stickers for he and his wife’s dog Stevie, a pitbull mix they adopted about a year ago.

After the call, however, Ely ordered one.

“It should be coming in tomorrow,” he said on Thursday.

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